By the time we hit the fog, my skull felt like a plate grinding against a fault line.
Adrenaline always left a sour, metallic pressure behind my eyes, a biological tax for surviving a man who swung a cleaver the size of a surfboard. It didn't help that I currently functioned as a lateral stabilizer for a Jōnin-level paperweight.
Kakashi-sensei had passed out; he effectively turned into six feet of dead-weight muscle and damp flak-jacket. Naruto had one of Kakashi's arms draped over his shoulders, his teeth gritted as he took the brunt of the weight. Sasuke took the other side, his expression pinched into a scowl that looked more like a mask for sheer exhaustion. I walked behind them, my hands hovering near Kakashi's lower back to catch him every time the boys stumbled over the uneven, salt-crusted cobbles of the village.
The Land of Waves didn't welcome us. It just existed in a state of slow, humid rot.
Wooden houses sagged under patched roofs, appearing like teeth ready to fall out of a diseased gum. Docks leaned at angles that made my own knees ache. People moved along the shore like ghosts—heads down, shoulders slumped, eyes flicking up just long enough to register our blood-stained clothes before dropping back to the mud.
My chakra sense hummed with a low-frequency dread. Konoha usually felt like sunlight through leaves—busy, bright, crowded with little sparks. This place? Gray overcast with a hundred percent chance of despair. Every signature I picked up felt thin and frayed, like the local population burned their energy just to keep breathing.
"Almost... there," Tazuna wheezed. He led the way, clutching his bottle like a holy relic, his own jittery chakra wrapping around a core of cynical bravado.
We turned onto a narrow path leading toward a small two-story house near the water's edge. It looked better maintained than the rest—clean doorframe, swept front step—but it still carried the weight of the mist. When Tazuna slid the door open and called out a tired, "I'm home," the warmth that hit me almost felt like a physical strike.
"Tou-san?"
A woman stepped into view, wiping her hands on a coarse towel. She had long dark hair and eyes that looked like they hadn't seen a full night's sleep in years. She took one look at Naruto and Sasuke's trembling legs and the unconscious man between them.
"Tsunami, help them," Tazuna commanded.
She didn't ask questions. She moved with an efficient, practiced grace, grabbing Kakashi's belt and helping the boys steer him toward a side room. We laid him on a futon, the floorboards groaning under the collective weight. Tsunami immediately began checking his pulse, her chakra feeling tired—not from output, but from the sheer effort of holding her world together.
"He's just exhausted," I muttered, my voice sounding flat as I pushed my glasses up my nose. "Chakra depletion. His system hit zero and pulled the emergency brake."
Tsunami nodded, pulling a blanket over Kakashi's chest. "He can rest here. You three look like you're about to join him. Please, sit. I have rice on."
Naruto practically teleport-shuffled toward the table, his stomach letting out a growl that could have been mistaken for a feral animal. We settled around the low table, the smell of cooking rice acting as a temporary anchor for my spinning head.
As we ate, Tazuna explained the reality of their parasite, Gato. He didn't sound like a bandit king; he sounded like an infection. He squeezed the shipping, the merchants, and the thugs until the village turned into this—a collection of ghosts waiting for the end.
"I'm gonna beat him," Naruto said through a mouthful of rice, though his hand shook as he held his chopsticks. "I'll beat him and be Hokage and—"
Thud.
Small footsteps echoed down the hall. A boy padded into the room, a hat pulled low over his eyes. I didn't need my chakra sense to feel the storm cloud around him; it was a tightly coiled knot of bitterness, like a rubber band stretched until the fibers started to snap.
"Inari," Tsunami said gently. "Say hello. These are the ninja protecting Grandpa."
Inari glanced at us. He looked at Naruto's wide, orange-tinted grin and the dried blood on our hitai-ate.
"What, those losers?"
Naruto choked. "Hey! I'm not a loser!"
Inari snorted, his gaze fixed on the floor. "You're just going to die. Gato kills everyone who tries to fight. Why do you bother?"
The room went silent, save for the rhythmic, heavy breathing of Kakashi in the next room. I watched the words hit Naruto like a physical blow. His chakra flared hot—anger, hurt, and that old, echoing loneliness I knew too well.
He slammed his bowl down, his face a mask of desperation. "Listen, you jerk, I'm not gonna die! I'm gonna beat that guy and—"
"Enough," Sasuke said, though his own voice carried a jagged edge of fatigue. "He's just a kid."
Inari's shoulders hunched. His chakra flickered—shame, grief, something raw—before it snapped back into a hard shell. "You don't get it," he muttered. "None of you get it."
He turned and stomped back down the hall. Naruto half-rose to follow, his knuckles white. I reached out and slid a hand onto his forearm, my fingers catching the fabric of his sleeve.
"Let him sulk," I said quietly. "It's his house. He gets priority sulking rights."
"But he thinks we're gonna—"
"He thinks hope is a scam, Naruto. You don't argue trauma math with someone who has lost the ability to add."
Naruto frowned at me, confused by the phrasing, but he sat back down. The rest of the meal passed in a heavy, humid silence.
Later, after the house had gone mostly quiet, I stepped out onto the small back porch. The air felt cool and damp, the fog curling around the edges of the yard like it was trying to sneak inside. I could hear Naruto somewhere up on the hill, shouting practice kiai into the darkness—a sound of pure, stubborn defiance. Sasuke's chakra was a steady, brooding flame further off.
Kakashi's signature remained a dim, contained ember upstairs, dampened by the deep sleep of the broken.
Inari's room glowed faintly with lamplight. I thought about the first time I died. I thought about lying in the woods, staring at my own blood, convinced that the universe was a transactional place where no one came for free. Someone had nudged my ending.
I dug around in my pouch, fingers brushing the tags and ink sticks until I found a blank slip of paper.
"Not real magic," I murmured, my hand still trembling slightly as I drew. "Just art therapy with extra steps."
I sketched a tiny, simple spiral—a leaf, a wave, a rising sun. Nothing fancy. I let a trickle of my remaining chakra soak into the ink—just enough to make the paper warm to the touch. A placebo for a broken heart.
I padded quietly down the hall and stopped outside Inari's door. I could hear faint, rhythmic sniffles from inside. I didn't knock. I just found a small nail by the frame and pressed the tag onto it. The paper fluttered once, then settled.
"Goodnight, small, angry child," I whispered. "May your emotional weather improve by, like, one percent."
I went back to my futon and lay down, staring at the ceiling. The Land of Waves felt like a tragedy already written, the ink still wet on the page. But for the first time since waking up in this body, I had the sense that maybe, just maybe, we'd get to smudge the lines.